Losing Faith in SE

[gamesmart]

This is consistent with everything that I have ever read. Thank You. I used to have Verizon FiOS (many threads on here for that) and recall people reporting latency issues.

In short, it is easy to blame SE for negative "server lag" experience to those who are not fully in the know who these things work. I don't understand it all personally, but I am wise enough to know that it isn't simply SE's issue.

Honestly, I personally don't know a whole lot about networking myself. All of the stuff I posted before was what I've learned from these forums (shocker, I know), and the occasional trace route I've done whenever something starts acting up. Of course, it's a bit of a personal interest for me as I'm going into computer science (still a freshman though), so I'm a bit more inclined to want to know how it works rather than just saying "hurrdurr SE fix this."

[Zplinter]

RMT:
(I am on Excalibur and you get it EVERYWHERE and all the freaking time.)
/busy is a player devised bandaid not a solution.
From what I gather, SE does in fact have a special task force devoted to the RMT issue, however I was lead to believe that is consist of three people. This is a 24/7/365 (minus maintenance okay), this means if it is really only 3 staff members then this is a very limited team to receive reports, review logs and take action in a game this big across this many servers.

I am not sure who first suggested this but it is a great start: If they would let us blacklist the account and not the character it would help immensely.

HOUSING:
umm do not get me started on this one, I am very disappointed in how this has been handled.

RNG:
The gods of RNG hate me, and to spite them I will not give up. (26 runs of WP for my zodiac drop)

Posting char limit 1k are you kidding me?


love the rest of the game

[Kosmos992k]

From what I gather, SE does in fact have a special task force devoted to the RMT issue, however I was lead to believe that is consist of three people. This is a 24/7/365 (minus maintenance okay), this means if it is really only 3 staff members then this is a very limited team to receive reports, review logs and take action in a game this big across this many servers.

The task force is kind of the second tier support, the reports are (I believe) fielded by GMs, and the task force focuses on tracing the accounts, investigating them and acting. Still with something like 22,000 accounts permanently banned in the last 2 weeks alone, they are not exactly idle...

What is actually happening is people are experiencing packet loss on the route to the servers, which, thanks to the terrible American network infrastructure, often passes through a node that can't handle the traffic. Level 3 Communications is particularly notorious for this, and the reason FFXIV gets hit by connection issues so much is because Level 3 has a node particularly close to where the servers are located (Montreal) that is especially bad.

Just to add to this, and perhaps provide a little insight. Level 3 (along with Cogent) is currently considering suing US Broadband Internet providers (such as ComCast). This comes after the new Net Neutrality rules from the FCC and the language in those rules that prevents ISPs from throttling any legal data traffic. Cogent and possibly Level 3 could allege that the ISPs are throttling traffic that the interconnection points with the backbone transit services provided by Cogent, Level 3 and companies like them. Back in 2010, Level 3 was forced to pay up by the troll under the bridge (ComCast) but Cogent refused. 5 years later the same crap is still rumbling along.

I'm not saying that Level 3 is not at fault, but there is also a very high degree of likelihood that US ISPs are shafting consumers as well by throttling traffic at the interconnection points. nNormally these kinds of interconnections are handled through something called settlement free peering, where everybody agrees to interconnect with everyone else for free - kind of an "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" kind of agreement. ComCast on the other hand wants money to allow traffic from services such as Netflix (and other streaming/gaming services) onto their network ("you show me yours, and pay me to show you mine"). Basically they want a toll to allow the data that transits via Level 3 and/or Cogent to get to their customers without throttling.

Personally, I thought I paid ComCast for that service, and I should not have to pay more to get un-throttle access, nor should anyone else. It pisses me off no end that they interfere with my access to force an unrelated 3rd party to pay them for what I already paid. That's double dipping, and at the end of the day it just hurts customers.

I should also mention that I have have done trace routes from my residential ComCast service and also trace routes from my corporate network (work) both of which go through ComCast. I see terrible response times (200-300ms sometimes longer) from the various nodes on the network with my residential access, but my work network gets <10 ms response, from the same nodes. That's not Level 3, Cogent or anyone else, it's purely Comcast. I would bet that something similar happens with other ISPs where consumers get shafted, but 'business' customers do not.

[Nadrojj]

Sounds like a MMO isn't for you bud. Maybe you should look into console gaming.

MMO's always have grinds/rng/gated content, that's what keeps the playerbase there and engaged in their game. Look at the state of the game right now, most people have accomplished what they need and are now taking a break until the expansion, those who aren't are trying to furiously catch up. That's the carrot that is always danging in front of you, gotta catch up!

[Maero]

I have not lost faith in SE, granted yes the support is horrid but this game itself has plus and minuses. To me the amount of content in the plus makes up for how horrid and annoying the rng grind is for say Relic
The RMT also has had it's ups and downs, but since Gold Saucer no doubt it has got real bad on NA servers

[NorthernLadMSP]

The RMT (at least on my server) is out of control. I'm constantly having to go /busy to avoid being sent junk tells every few minutes. This causes me to lose out any potential conversation with real game friends because they can't message you. Then everytime I go to any of the major cities, shout chat gets absolutely bombarded with the same gil seller shouting the same message up to 8-10 times in a row, every few minutes. Then the friend requests from lvl 1 Ughghh Sksksks in Ul'dah. OMG, enough to drive one insane.

As for the RNG aspect, I understand RNG is needed in games like this to expand the lifespan of content. However, often times in this game, it feels like an absolute joke. I've become especially aware of it lately as I've been trying to obtain alt gear from WOD (almost two weeks of non-stop WOD just to finally get the DRG chest) to leveling miner and seeing:

"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"

While having a 96% success rate.

[Zanarken]

As for the RNG aspect, I understand RNG is needed in games like this to expand the lifespan of content. However, often times in this game, it feels like an absolute joke. I've become especially aware of it lately as I've been trying to obtain alt gear from WOD (almost two weeks of non-stop WOD just to finally get the DRG chest) to leveling miner and seeing:

"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"
"You obtain nothing"

While having a 96% success rate.

I've had similar experiences. While everyone I have attempted to discuss this matter on has assured me the RNG in this game is "perfectly fine" I have my doubts. The probability of the outcome you just described is .00000256. That is something you should only experience as a harvester a few times in your entire gathering career yet I have had it happen more times than I can count. 98% success rate & 4/5 misses. Never ceases to amaze me.

This is nothing. Where I come from, the gil sellers owned all the best hunting spots and would happily PK you until you deleveled/dropped your gear if you tried to fight there, even if you needed it for a quest.

But yeah, it is pretty annoying.

That is horrible >< No way would I be able to tolerate that. What MMO was that if you don't mind me asking?

[NorthernLadMSP]

I've had similar experiences. While everyone I have attempted to discuss this matter on has assured me the RNG in this game is "perfectly fine" I have my doubts. The probability of the outcome you just described is .00000256. That is something you should only experience as a harvester a few times in your entire gathering career yet I have had it happen more times than I can count. 98% success rate & 4/5 misses. Never ceases to amaze me.

Oh, definitely. It's not something that has happened once or twice, it happens quite frequently.

[TheRogueX]

During my trial period I almost quit over the RMT spam because it shows a lack of community moderation & professionalism. I have played nearly a dozen MMO's & NONE of them have had this poor of moderation.

This is nothing. Where I come from, the gil sellers owned all the best hunting spots and would happily PK you until you deleveled/dropped your gear if you tried to fight there, even if you needed it for a quest.

But yeah, it is pretty annoying.

[dragorian]

If you have a lot of disconnections,lag and or game crashing it is not the servers. You should take your CPU heatsink off you will be surprised that the thermal past had crystalized and need to replace itif not the issue then either your graphics card is old or you're mobo is dying also do you have sufficient cooling and a good case and dust free. Also do you have the right mobo for CPU if CPU is fbus 5gts and using an 4gts board ull have bad performance I'd also would use an lab killer from Razer it makes ffxiv priority